OpenAI's ‘leaked' Super Bowl ad with ear buds exposed as fake

An interesting advertisement that surfaced recently, claiming to be OpenAI's official Super Bowl commercial, has been confirmed to be fake.

The buzz around OpenAI and rival Anthropic's ads intensified as the Super Bowl came to a close. The advert was said to be a "leaked" version of OpenAI's official Super Bowl ad.

Screenshots shared in a Reddit thread, which has now been deleted, depicted a frustrated employee lamenting that their ad had not aired, accidentally sharing a video that purportedly featured Alexander Skarsgård, star of Murderbot, in the presence of what appeared to be OpenAI’s first hardware device—a shiny orb paired with wraparound earbuds.

Taking action on the fabricated ad, OpenAI president Greg Brockman dismissed the claims on X, labelling the story as “fake news.” Validating Brockman's remark was OpenAI spokesperson Lindsay McCallum, dubbing the leak “totally fake.”

The misleading piece of content was caught off guard thanks to the suspicious circumstances of the ad. The Reddit account, “wineheda,” that initially posted the content was newly created and has since been deleted.

It seems that the perpetrator of this hoax had been meticulously planning what he executed. Max Weinbach tweeted screenshots of an email he received a week before, proposing the promotion of an OpenAI hardware teaser ad featuring Skarsgård, which included a payment of $1,146.12.